It will come at no surprise that the pinky finger is usually the weakest of your four fingers. Along with that the third finger, the ring finger, can often be a stubborn finger - a little bit more difficult to control than the other fingers. A good warm up session should include exercises that focus on that area of your hand, the pinky and ring fingers, with the goal of building up finger strength, dexterity and control.

Whilst showing a full music score for today's exercise may have looked fancy the diagram here gives a simpler way of looking at things. The exercise for today is also quite simple but can be demanding.

Before we get into playing the exercise we'll establish that is played over a C Major octave. We start on one C note, play a short sequence of notes and continue all the way across the notes of a C Major scale (all the white keys) until we arrive at the next C note. If you'd like to keep going, by all means, but for purposes here just one octave is fine.

Notice the order of notes played. The first four notes are the first four notes of the C Major scale being C - D - E - F. The numbers shown in the diagram indicate which finger to use. That is pinky (4), ring (3), index (2), pointer (1). Move up to the next note and repeat (D - E - F - G). Move up and repeat (E - F - G - A) and so on.

You'll always be leading with your pinky finger in this exercise. Just getting to the next C note is not enough. You actually have to arrive at the C note and play the four matching notes. When you're done, guess what! Time to head all the way back always leading with your pinky finger.

The exercise outlined above and shown in the diagram is for left hand. Feel free to play the same concept with your right hand. That would be C-B-A-G, B-A-G-F, A-G-F-E, and so on.

One last pointer. If your hand starts to hurt just stop. Give the other hand a shot. Over time you'll be able to play through this exercise smoothly and without feeling too much tension in your hands, forearm and wrists.

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Rockbadger holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts - specializing in Digital Media and Music Composition. Moving from the independent arena Rockbadger now brings his talents and skills to you to help you get the most for your marketing, promotional and event needs.